A random thinker draws some estimating archetypes. The archetypes are true, as you'll recognise. He has the obvious players, the optimist, the pessimist, the padder. Interestingly, he has the generalist being the one who can't be sure. In my experience, the generalist is often the person who'se been one of the other archetypes and realised the error. They've come to the conclusion that it's really hard to predict the future, especially in a field as soft as software.
His solution to the generalist's insight is to teach them the WBS process. Hmmm, can't say I'm a fan. I've never seen a WBS process work well. The unplanned tasks often swamp the time spent in planned tasks. I should get a PMI certification, that will make me a better planner. Here's a couple of other views on the scientific management of software processes, some of my thoughts and check out these two webcasts from someone much cleverer than me.
There some discussion of the psychological biases in estimating here, which bring to light some reasons for the failing of WBS approaches.
tags: estimation, project+management
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